


He's Come Back

by PaulaMcG



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: 80's Music, Afterlife, Artist Remus Lupin, Canon-Divergent after OotP, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Painting, Reunions, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulaMcG/pseuds/PaulaMcG
Summary: After the veil's gone, Sirius realises that there's no way but back to the scene where he was once captured.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.3





	He's Come Back

**Author's Note:**

> My prompt at the 2020/2021 R/S Fireside Tales was T23:  
>  _Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back._ ― Cormac McCarthy, Child of God
> 
> Thank you, mods, participants and readers! Thank you, my loyal beta Liseuse!

Last... or lost? These are sounds taking shape inside. There's been silence and darkness and no dimension or... sense – in any sense of the word. No words until these start emerging.

This is... our last?

This is... ourselves?

Now there is something... and somebody? There is himself, who is perhaps somebody, and the sounds and the repeating shapes of phrases are inside him.

“This Sirius is yours.” That voice, outside, is his... brother's? His true brother's. (The first one is lost.)

The name's Prongs. And himself, he's someone else's Sirius?

He's got eyes that have opened, and there's a golden streak of light. He's got a mouth filled with bitter taste, and a nose that can smell... expensive magical canvas, yes, the kind with special sensitivity for concealing and resurrecting charcoal lines and watercolour wash. That's a lot of words brought back from the last... gift bought for... someone. But the scent is buried under smoke as soon as he breathes out. He is breathing – a wondrous thing that barely requires remembering.

And he's got a whole face – which is brushed by... still the veil? The veil has been a constant and sole presence. But now it's gone and only remembered.

This is something more singular. He's got fingers, too, and they've dropped the cigarette and touched the delicate little thing that tickles his cheek. Cautiously he trails the frail bones of a tiny skeleton held together by such thin membrane that he can hardly see it even when he looks, as it's traversed by this miracle of nascent light.

Suddenly it's not a lone leaf, but one in the foliage of the birch tree he's come back to. Sadly, as he's become somebody who knows there's no way but back. Only to this scene where he's once been leaning his hips against the balcony railing and been captured on this canvas, which is now finally about to be rolled open. And there will be access only to memories stored in his mind even earlier than that – with the exception of the final, a lot later incident that was the veil.

He is able to stare out of here, away from the lost and resurrected glow of the last golden afternoon of youth's autumn. When turning towards where he won't see his darkened living room with the record-player as the source of the song from October 1981 that now plays only in his head (... what this world is about...), he blinks in bright white light.

And he catches the sight of a young man stepping away, down a ladder. A thick mop of unruly black hair, and a lopsided, wistful grin, and a flash on spectacles. Yes, his brother Prongs... and yet again, no. Just before the face descends from view, the eyes are visible. Their brilliant green belongs to the amazing Amazon Queen of the Marauders.

Now he's facing fully where the room would be, not his alone, but for the last several months shared with...

"Lost this, too." His Moony – here he is!

But not in that room, or on this balcony, with a paint brush in hand. His Moony's left palm is the source of magical daylight that reaches the rafters above the same loft where the two of them climbed on a sweltering July day shared in Moony's parents' house. Moony's now learnt to conjure even white flames, and this illumination reveals mercilessly not only the familiar scars, but new ones, and the roughness of aged skin, and the crinkles in the corners of the eyes and the mouth, deeper than in any memory.

Then again, the smile is more joyous, too, and in the warm amber of the gaze there is... the shimmer of the past he's preserved in his painting and now got back, and the pure reality of days he goes on living despite his losses, all the life... Whereas this is all that's left of...

This is ourselves...

Under pressure?

At least this enchanted mind's realised that it keeps being assaulted by some words that happened to ring out at the moment of the connection which has ended up finalising the Magic of Images. Back then the aspiring artist touched his Sirius's skin and heart, and succeeded. And now for the one returned from behind the veil, there is an ability to speak new words.

"Love." That's an old one, but at least he's said it aloud, and that means he is somebody, his Moony's Sirius.

Why can't we give love... Give love!

"You are..." Are those tears going to roll down the familiar but... mature face? "Back with me."

He is... They both are still so much in love, despite all the suspicion that the other is a traitor, that there's a need to ward off the overwhelming joy and desire by talking about someone else he loves. "And Prongs is here, too." Miraculously he's managed to form a genuine sentence, and here's another one coming out. "Back in your childhood home?"

"I live here now, yes." Moony's placed the flame onto a table and reached his hand closer to... this one that's escaping to fumble for another fag. "But no... You must have seen Harry. He's sixteen."

Yes, he needs a smoke. And a drink, but he knows he won't have one. It's the terror of knowing... 

"Harry's just brought back to me what bloody Dumbledore hid away and made me think was destroyed when... There's a lot I'll tell you later. We've got all the time now that I can keep you like this."

Now how could there be a way to know what to say? "Can't we give ourselves one more chance?" He's managed to sing it aloud, remembering how his Moony always encouraged him, although as a child he'd been told his voice was faulty and he shouldn't...

And Moony's smile shows that he's even made the song recognisable. "You remember how we danced to that Queen song – ever more fitting, it turned out... No, you only heard it. The dancing was right after I completed the painting."

The background had been polished with care on those long evenings when Prongs and Padfoot had been delayed on Order missions or on Auror duty, or romped in woods, trying to leave behind all worries. Each leaf is as perfect as real in how it's surrendering the rest of its lifely green. But it's no use leaning over and peeking through the branches, trying to catch a glimpse of his little godson with daddy Prongs down in front of the building. He must be grateful to see them in memories. There's space to take only a few steps, and the railing is uncompromising like bars of a prison cell.

He's always hated staying still, but he made the mistake to pose here for his Moony. "Let me out!"

"You know I can't. But the magic will perhaps allow us to touch."

He doubts it, and he can hardly bear glancing over his shoulder to see the fading smile. 

The soothing voice alone helps him believe that they are together. "And we can talk about all the good old days. I'll tell you about the later ones, too, but that's my story. And Sirius's – that Sirius's who continued to live, against all odds, until June. But not yours. Yours ended just before that... last dance."

**Author's Note:**

> The song from October 1981 was Under Pressure (released on the 26th of October) by Queen and David Bowie. In the text there are several phrases from the lyrics.


End file.
